In the art world, knowing the provenance, or the ownership history, of a piece of art, is critical to establishing its veracity and value. The same should be true of any ‘fact’ that you wish to use to support an argument in asset management. We speak of ‘evidence-based’ decision making, but how valid or reliable is our ‘evidence’? In other words, how do facts become facts? As you think about this, consider the following:
I had been asked to review a paper about disability access and the author was keen to get my comment. As I read it, I noted his use of substantial and very favourable benefit-cost figures. Knowing how difficult it is even to conceptualise some of the benefits, let alone measure them, and finding no explanation of the figures in his paper, I ask him for the source.
“Oh, never mind that”, he airily replied, “what do you think of the paper overall?
I told him that I wouldn’t be able venture an opinion until I understood the data and, after a fair amount of applied pressure on my part, he eventually said:
“Look, I made them up! But it doesn’t matter because I am giving this paper at an international conference and someone will quote me, and then someone will quote that person – and pretty soon, it will be fact!” Unfortunately, this is a true story and he may not the only one acting in this manner.
Much of the time, however, mis-representation is not as blatant as this. It can be simply a matter of not paying enough attention to labelling the axes. Often we slap up a graph without identifying the axes and expect the audience to fill in the gaps from the context of the conversation. This is a lazy habit that is responsible for many subsequent misunderstandings. For example, what we think is a trend line showing full life cycle costs, might simply be a trend of operating costs. With very different implications!
What other examples do you have where presentations or papers, have or can be, misinterpreted with ill effects on Asset Management?
Ten years ago, after 20 years, I brought SAM to a close. I asked past contributors what the key issues then were, and what we – as asset managers – should do. What did they say – and what would you say today?
Here is that issue, SAM 400. What are your favourites? Top of the list for me was Melinda Hodkiewizc, Professor of Engineering at the University of Western Australia, who bluntly stated it was time to ante up and provide evidence to support our claims for asset management. I could not agree more, but have we done it?
Several referred to the need to make things simpler – both in terms of action and communication and Peter Way, then Chairman of the IPWEA, while recognising the difficulty, spoke of the critical need for asset managers to speak out whenever they see their political masters moving in a questionable direction. If only! After all, if we who know don’t do it, who can?
Many recognised the importance of the quality of our people in AM and the need for us to continue to think and to develop our abiliies, not mindlessly react. The ever practical Ashay Prabhu, implored us to ‘stop measuring the gap and start plugging it’.
While most focused on developed countries, Jo Parker, the only engineer I know who has had to build a bridge under duress with limited resources – whilst wearing a burka! – argued that “To spread AM to developing countries, first understand their world!” Is it ignorance or arrogance that drives so many ‘advisors’ from developed countries to assume what works for us will work everywhere?
What were the key issues then? Alan Butler, then Director of the Australian Center of Value Management, now retired, identified the following:
- depletion of core skills and the resultant dumbing down of the asset portfolio “clients” who need to be responsible for effective briefing and critical review of solutions being delivered on their behalf – the asset client must remain an informed client;
- the politicising of the public service where whole agencies are wrapped up in the short term priorities of the incumbent colour of government at the expense of strategic, portfolio-wide context – impartial advice, without fear or favour must exist;
- changing the procurement models that place specialist consultants in a position of technical influence where smaller solutions or non-build solutions are not in their commercial interest to present to the engaging “client” – no matter whether the arrangement is called an Alliance, Strategic partnership, Design & Construct, the “non-asset” or smaller solution must always be sought and tabled for real consideration;
- not understanding what “value for money” means for each client – these words are written everywhere including White Papers, policy, business cases and project briefs with very little understanding or ability to explain, measure or demonstrate what levels are sought and achieved – We have the tools and institutions to address this.
I think that this was a pretty good list for the time. What are the most critical issues we should now address? Thoughts?
Me at my favourite coffee shop
Most mornings I have coffee in my favourite coffee shop and have a chat with George, the barrista. I like George and I want his coffee shop to remain viable – difficult in these times of rising prices – so, in addition to the pleasure of the coffee itself, I get satisfaction from knowing that I am contributing in a small way to his continuing income. I could have spent my $6 in another coffee shop or not on coffee at all and then those dollars would contribute to someone else’s income and job sustainability so I know that my expenditure is not increasing the number of jobs in total, I am simply impacting (admittedly in a very small way) where the jobs are being created or preserved.
But let us consider this same type of transaction – purchasing something for money – on a far larger scale. The government decides to build more infrastructure, say for a billion dollars, and it justifies that expenditure on the grounds that it is ‘creating thousands of jobs’. Let us set aside for a moment that the number of jobs is usually greatly exaggerated, never validated, and many of them may last only a few weeks or months. The real question is: are these jobs ‘additional jobs’, which is the way we are expected to view it and generally do, or have we simply changed the type and location of the jobs?
The government could have spent that one billion on community services (doctors, nurses, teachers, police etc or, indeed – if infrastructure is so important – on the maintenance of existing infrastructure ), or it could have left it in your pay packet instead of raising taxes to fund its infrastructure spend, but it chose to spend it on bricks and mortar. We like the idea of ‘more’ jobs being provided. We are less thrilled about the idea of jobs being lost. Fortunately for our peace of mind we do not see the jobs that are lost and although we do experience the lack of services that results we do not necessarily associate the two. So let us look at a typical project.
In December 1985 when the Adelaide Casino was established by the state owned Lotteries Commission, there was much hype about how many jobs would be ‘created’ by the Casino. And indeed, for the first six months, there was great excitement about this novelty. People flocked to it, abandoning their usual venues. It was the first Casino in the state and many went there to drink or eat, and some to gamble and the Casino employed many. After a while, however, the novelty wore off, fewer people went and the number of service people employed by the Casino declined. Customers sought to return to their previous venues but some of these, having to cope with reduced incomes in the interim but still pay high city rental prices had gone broke and moved out. Trouble was, in calculating the increase in jobs, no attention had been paid to where the new Casino customers were coming from or how long they would remain customers. The lovely little coffee shop I frequented in the city, which provided chess sets and boards for its customers, was sadly one of those that went out of business.
The moral of this story is when thousands of new job are vaunted, stop, look closer.
In case you haven’t caught up with it yet, ALGA’s ‘2024 National State of the Assets Report: future proofing our communities’ was released a week ago. You can download a copy of the Summary and Technical reports here:
Sometimes reviewing a report is a chore. This was a pleasure. It ticked all the boxes: it was very readable; honed in on the important issues and provided useful, verified data. It would be impossible for anyone to read this report and not gain a great appreciation for the pressures being faced by all councils, but especially smaller and regional councils, as they face the combined effect of asset ageing, climate change, increasing consumer expectations and more stringent regulations – and very little access to funding.
My overwhelming reaction, and it may be yours too, was to realise that better asset management is unlikely, by itself, to be sufficient. And this may be the most important take away. Asset Management is often presented as a panacea, it is not – but it is where we must start, for if we cannot manage effectively what we already have, how can we ask for more?
The good news is that this ALGA report indicates improvements are being made. How we express data has a major effect on how it is received. I particularly appreciated having infrastructure costs expressed per ratepayer. There was a time when we felt that large aggegate numbers had more impact and everybody tried to make their future costs as big as possible ‘to be impressive’, but expressing costs on a small personal scale, i.e. per ratepayer, enables greater understanding. We are more able to feel it. I also like the way that averages were dealt with. When I started work on life cycle renewal costs, realising that averages concealed more than they revealed, I put a lot of effort into calculating full age distributions. But ALGA has realised we don’t need to do all that work if we supplement the average with an indication of the extent of the most urgent of renewals. Very sensible. Indeed the entire report is very sensible. There is a lot of data, but it is carefully designed not to overwhelm.
It is a useful base for arguing for change. Change in the way we fund councils, change in the way we record and use depreciation figures are the first two that come to mind. What else would you like to see changed?
“ It was great to celebrate Asset Management’s 40th year with many old friends and new, a celebration that started with AM Peak in Adelaide and finished with the IPWC Conference in Melbourne. At both ot these gatherings about 30% of the attendees were women, mostly young women, such a very good sign for the future of AM. Also good signs of ethnic diversity. I recalled the beginning of both associations and so had occasion to reflect on how they have grown and developed over the years.
In between these events I was able to spend time in Brisbane and meet with AM friends and colleagues of #Chris Adam at Stantec and #Joe Mathew at QUT, while enjoying the company of my long time friend #Kerry McGovern. Then it was on to the Blue Mountains to meet #Lis Bastian and to stay with #Jeff Roorda, Infrastructure Director with the BM City Council. This was shortly after a major landslide had caused the collapse of the only road into Megalong Valley. A new temporary road was built within days but was only able to cope with light traffic putting Jeff in the position of dealing with simultaneous environmental, economic and social disasters in this very beautiful and highly sensitive area. Then just a day ago came news of a sink hole in a Sydney suburb, the result of heavy rains and it is likely that many more of us will be dealing with triple disasters soon.
The truth is that across the country we are facing major challenges and major change and much that we think we know now needs serious reconsideration. I am now taking a Sabbatical or “Time Out” for the next six months to research and reflect on what those of us in the Infrastructure and Asset Management game can do, but I am happy to receive your ideas If you are also concerned.
PS. I have today done what I should have done weeks ago and that is to upload all the remaining chapters of Norman Eason’s “Maintenance and Asset Management Information Systems“. Now this link will get you the lot! Do have a look. I am sure that you will be surprised by how much you can still learn from work that was written 25 years ago! Then the idea was to develop understanding so we tackled the ‘why’ of different issues. Today the emphasis has been on the ‘how’. But the ‘Why’ is still critically important – because likely different .
“What’s the first step to a good Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP)? A bad SAMP…”
My ex-colleague Ark Wingrove’s saying has resonated with clients since he first coined it. You do not have to wait for perfection; the important thing is to start, knowing you can improve as you go.
It works not just because it’s true. Just having someone tell you you won’t get everything in Asset Management perfect first time liberates us to try. Otherwise – and this surely tells us something about the asset culture we pick up, and need to change – we get frozen in the headlights of needing to be right.
It’s a profound truth of AM that you will never know enough about the future; and yet you still have to have a strategy, you still have to plan, you still have to make decisions that matter. And so inevitably we will get some important things wrong.
The approach that the AM documents and processes we produce are all iterative is, of course, built into the diagrams, the 6 Box Model and the flow of ISO 55000, continuous improvement and the ’learning loop’ of Plan-Do-Check-Adapt. The idea that, above all, we can’t leap straight from muddle to highly sophisticated Asset Management Planning has long been recognised in Australasia. We have to build, step by step, our planning evolving with our increasing understanding.
But it just struck me that it’s not simply how we improve things as we know more. The real blocks are thinking we know more than we do at the start, and the fear that we will be exposed for not knowing enough – the toxic aspects of being an expert.
Years ago Penny Burns came in to take my Sydney team through scenario planning. The real achievement of this was to move everyone away from their confidence. From believing they could ever be certain about the future.
In an exercise around understanding our levels of uncertainty in risk training this week, someone asked – tongue in cheek – how we could ‘win’.*
The urge to be right is natural, I guess, but it also goes with all sorts of baggage. That we won’t even start unless we can be certain. That it is better not to try than to run the risk of being wrong.
As though, for example, a strategy for Asset Management is a test we have to pass.
The principle of evolving, getting better as we go but never reaching 100% certainty. What examples of positively ‘embracing uncertainty’ have you seen in practice?
*Calibration training based partly on the work of Douglas Hubbard, see his The Failure of Risk Management. If you have never come across this, aiming to show off that you’re right that will ensure you don’t get it right. (And even telling people this doesn’t help them, at least the first time around.)
With the beginning of a new year, most of us are thinking about what we plan to do in 2023 – we consider our aims, objectives, goals and targets.
I am reminded of a conversation, some years ago, between Françoise Szigeti, who was then Vice President, International Centre for Facilities, Ottawa, Canada and Helen Tippett, then Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Science, Victoria University, New Zealand.
Françoise observed that the same words tended to be used to convey totally different meanings, and Helen came up with the following that she uses to help her students keep the meanings straight.
- “You AIM for the stars.
- Your OBJECTIVE is to land on the moon.
- Your GOAL is to build a rocket with enough fuel to get you there at an affordable cost.
- Your TARGET is be ready to launch in two years.”
Got It?
Yes, it may be frantic now as we try to finish up all those things we promised we would have done ‘by the end of the year’, but soon it will be Christmas and, hopefully, we can relax and catch up on reading more, as we also promised ourselves, but didn’t get done.
If this sounds like you, may I recommend a book that will have you laughing as well as learning? In “Corporate Punishment”, James Adonis, takes apart 38 of the most common – and most annoying – business clichés, such as ’employees are our greatest asset’, ‘think outside the box’, ‘pick the low hanging fruit’, and the ever-present but abysmally misleading ‘what gets measured, gets done’. At the very least, you will avoid the embarrassment of using them yourself.
The cleverness of the cover illustration encouraged me to pick this up and start reading and after that, the author kept me going until the very last page. I don’t know about you, but it is the rare book I read right through to the end nowadays, so this is a rare recommendation.
AM Clichés?
Reading these general business clichés reminded me that we have our own in asset management – perhaps the leading one being ‘there are no votes in maintenance’. If there were a book of AM Clichés, what clichés would you suggest should be included?
What is a better question?
The tag line for Talking Infrastructure is ‘generating better questions’. Ruth’s brilliant last post reminded me that I had never defined a ‘better’ question. So let’s do that.
Very briefly, a ‘better’ question is one where the answer creates new information, or in the words of Michael Port (Heroic Pubic Speaking) it’s a question that Google can’t answer!
More than that, it generates new capability, allowing us to do new things, or old things in a better way.
Are these ‘better’ questions?
The first volume of our story of Asset Management, ‘Asset Management as a Quest’ consists of a search for the answers to the following series of questions. (You can read Part One of this volume – and our search for answers to the first two of these questions – here)
1: How much does it cost South Australians to get their water services?
2: What is the likely cost and timing of renewing water assets?
3: What is the cost and timing of renewal for all state infrastructure: Public Housing, Hospitals, Schools and Colleges, Highways,Transit, Power and Water?
4: What can be done to contain costs?
5: How do we instill an AM mindset?
6: How do we spread the word about asset management and its benefits?
7: What are the consequences if AM is not understood?
8: Are our tools and data up to the challenges we now face?
9: How do we advance the narrative but also keep it focused?
10: How did NSW move the story forward and what can we learn from its actions?
Your View
Q: Are these ‘better’ questions? Why or why not?
Q: What other questions were being considered in this early perid of our history (1984-1993)?
Asking Questions
And, if you would like to know more about question asking, here are two great books
‘Questions are the Answer’ by Hal Gregersen, and
‘Curious’ by Ian Lewis (recommended by Lou Cripps after reading Ruth’s post)
In writing Building an Asset Management Team, Lou Cripps and I looked at the skills an effective Asset Management team requires – both technical and business understanding, good grasp of front-line experience, both system and structured thinking, a longer term perspective, emotional intelligence and communication skills, embracing uncertainty and the tools to think about risk, integrity, and enough leadership ability to get others to buy into a new way of working.
Good infrastructure Asset Management requires a tricky combination of attributes.
Lou came up with the image of the platypus, that is very rare and not to be found on most continents.
Instead of searching for an amphibious, duck-billed, otter-footed, egg-laying, venomous mammal that locates prey through electroreception, it’s easier to provide all the qualities we need through a complementary team.
But we still love platypuses. Watch out for more of them in the next ten days!
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